as birdsong returns in the morning
by greenteafarm
Summary: "In beginnings there are endings; in endings there are beginnings; it is like a circle with no starting point. Lose hold of this, and  everything  will decline." What happens to Helena after the finale. Later slight Helena/Myka.
1. The Beginning as It Ends

It begins, of course, with a choice, albeit not a very brilliant one. She's sprinting down a cobblestoned street of in Hong Kong, slipping every so often on the wet stones. There's a voice in her ear, shouting instructions she promptly ignores. She just wants to stop, lay down her gun and just sleep - she's so tired of this fucked-up business. The drumming footsteps get closer; she can hear their shouts. She frowns – those are some nasty names they're calling her. Resisting the urge to turn around and curse them with all the Cantonese she knows, she runs faster.

She rounds the corner and leaps into a waiting unmarked van. Tires screeching, they roar out into a glitzy main street, heading onto a highway and to a waiting plane on Lantau Island.

Even in the unlit car, she can feel Sawyer's disapproval radiating out like waves.

"It's not quite my fault." She runs a hand through her hair, smooths down the lapels of her jacket, and continues. "The alarm went off and people found out. That's all."

There's a sigh, and a light flickers on. "Yes, just an alarm. And there just happened to be 30 armed men running wild in the streets looking for a woman who stole an artifact belonging to one of the triad heads."

"Well, when you put it that way..."

Sawyer's face looms large in the half-darkness. Her mouth is wan, and drawn tight, as if full of displeasure and fighting a half-attempted smirk. A few wisps of blonde hairs fall down over her eyes. "Wells, don't be stupid. This is a special job. If you're losing your touch..."

"I understand the consequences."

"Do you really?"

–-

Even after a hundred years of meditation – and an ascetic lifestyle, Helena muses wryly – she's possibly even stupider than before she was bronzed. Honestly, who in their right mind would try to unleash a new Ice Age on the world?

Myka couldn't meet her eyes on the ride back to the warehouse. Perhaps that was a good thing, Helena thinks. Myka was pushing over a hundred miles per hour that day.

She sat in the car alternating between contemplating throwing open the door and leaping out or knocking Myka senseless and taking the wheel – both, she decided, were absurd, as absurd as her plan that was riddled full of holes. I_ may have meditated and abstained from earthly pleasures just like Siddhartha_, she thinks, _but I'll never be Buddha. Perhaps that too, is a good thing. _

-–-

Myka hauls Artie out of the car with no finesse as the waiting Regent and guards take Helena into custody. (Myka never, Helena notices, attempts to meet her eyes.) They usher her into the middle car of a three-vehicle convoy. There's a guard on either side, her hands held in the front, held rigid by wristcuffs.

"Would you like the Pits of Tartarus or would you like to work for us, Wells?"

Surprised, Helena flicks her gaze between the Regent – never did need to know their names; they're all slimy bastards – and the woman sitting besides him. The guards in the SUV are staring ahead, impassive. They're rumbling down some dirt road in this nowhere town in nowhere, USA. She's mildly glad to be rid of this place.

"Come again?" Helena shouldn't be surprised that the Pits actually exist. After all, she used a plethora of other artifacts that shouldn't exist at all.

"The Pits of Tartarus," the Regent enunciates slowly, like she damaged her head during the scuffle for the Minoan Trident, or like she's a child with a set of very dangerous skills. Helena wants to punch him in the face. "We can either confine you to the Pits of Tartarus, or you can work for us. In a limited capacity, of course, with lots of oversight."

"I'm Sawyer," the woman says. There's that aura about her, like she's incorruptible and just an unmoving force of nature. She fixes Helena a look.

"If you do decide to work for us, know that you'll be under constant – and I do mean constant – supervision, headed by me. And you'll be doing highly unscrupulous things." She waits a beat, and adds, "If you're ever caught, we'll deny any knowledge of an H.G. Wells, and you'll be left on your own. No help, not even a razorblade."

Helena takes a moment to let her gaze roam around the car, on the occupants, on the rolling land that stretches endlessly forever. _Darling Christina_, she thinks, _will I meet you soon if I take this path?_

Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Why can't her life ever be simple? _This is why you never try to destroy the world_, a voice whispers in her head. _It never, ever works. _

"What do you want me to do?"


	2. Lost in the City

Helena's lost all count of all her assignments. She's getting tired of all the running, the jetsetting, the covert operations that usually end with her bruised all over – "So you jumped off the roof this time to escape? What'd you do last time again? Right, dive into the sewer." "_Don't_ make fun – I spent days getting the smell out of my hair." - and with a guilty, guilty conscience. Especially after learning Myka quit after her defection.

But she's here to steal artifacts and kill people, not play with dolls and pretend she's living on a rainbow.

At least she's starting to slowly forget Christina – _her_ Christina, the joy of her life is fading in her mind. There's something supremely ironic about this, but she's too exhausted to think, let alone philosophize. Maybe that's the purpose of this all. Get her so tired that she's liable to accidentally kill herself hanging from the roof of some building or some sort.

They stuck her in some pale imitation of her former house, with only 2 rooms, mismatching carpets, a hideous wooden floor, and crude wood paneling, complete with modern fluorescent lights. She sighs and throws an arm over her eyes. A simulacrum of home is still home. Sawyer is standing by the door watching her.

"As much as I like seeing your blonde locks, Sawyer, I'm not in the mood to debrief right now."

To her credit, Sawyer doesn't rise to the bait. "Are you having trouble sleeping again?"

"No," Helena lies glibly. "It's probably just all the flying." She knows Sawyer's going to hear the catch in her voice, the slight pause before the words leave her lips. Damn woman knows too much about her, the enigma from the 19th-century.

"And unicorns are going to start appearing in the living room. I'll be up in a while to give you some pills."

There's a pause where both women eye each other, neither standing down.

"I'm going to have you stay away from the States," Sawyer said, politely ignoring Helena's soft sigh of relief. "You're shipping out to Prague in two days."

– -

_Case 17_

The first time she sees Myka with the Warehouse 13 gang after the whole "I'm-going-to-blow-up-the-world!" debacle is, quite plainly, a fucking shitstorm.

She's known that Myka left the team after her defection – Helena earned quite a few of sleepless nights over that tidbit of knowledge cannily dropped by Sawyer – but never quite expected to actually see her again.

She's deep in the bowels of Prague, scouring for a lost violin of Mozart's rumored to give the player a "Pied Piper"-type ability and Helena can _feel_ the artifact calling to her when Myka shows up and expresses her love by shooting at her chest with a Tesla.

She misses and the blast ricochets off the rock above Helena head with a flash of light and then she's scrabbling down the sloping tunnel, groping along the damp walls trying to get out of the madness. Her boots are sturdy enough, as is her coat and pants – she gave up trying to look pretty after getting attacked by a giant projection of Cthulhu – so she should be better off than the Warehouse 13 folks.

There's a backup team waiting above ground somewhere, or maybe even underground – she's completed all the missions to date without hassle, but it's not like they _trust_ her, and vice versa – and she's trying to reach someone on the comms but no one's responding and goddammit, she can hear Pete's disjointed running behind her as well.

"_Wells! _H.G. Wells!" She hears Myka shouting her name, absolutely livid. If Myka wasn't so proper, she'd be cursing by now. Helena's breath catches in her throat, but she pounds on. "Stop where you are now!"

Just ten more steps to a side tunnel and she'll be home safe, back in an unmarked van with guards and fucking Sawyer with her smug smirk and neatly pressed clothes and when did this life in this foreign century and country ever begin to feel vaguely comfortable? She sees the low ceiling coming out at her just seconds too late – lights go off in her head and somewhere, distantly, she can hear a hoarse yell.

-–

"Don't open your eyes, dear. That's a nasty cut you have on your head." Sawyer sounds at once far away and close, too close. She can hear the distant humming of the fluorescent lights.

Water rivulets run down her skull and into her damp hair. The bedsprings groan beneath her; Sawyer must be on the bed as well. If Helena moves too quickly, she's convinced the whole damn thing will collapse, and she'll probably be left sleeping on a mattress on the floor since the Regents – what the hell _is_ Sawyer, anyway? – are too cheap to actually buy anything not rusting and from the seventies. If she dies from tetanus, the ignominy of her death will ensure that she comes back and haunts the slimy gits.

I must've had quite a hit, Helena decides. There's no other way my thoughts would be jumping all over.

"I had someone stitch up your – ah, injury," Sawyer continues, shifting on Helena's bed, placing a wetcloth on her forehead. The rough cotton sheets scratch loudly against the fine cotton frabic of Sawyer's pants. Helena scrunches her eyes at the sound.

"Alan picked you up and brought you back to the van after you smashed your head open. And we got the artifact, thanks to your notes we found in your jacket." She pauses and says, "I think you should take several days off after this."

Helena finally opens her eyes only to retort, "Like I ever had a choice in whether I wanted to work or not."

Sawyer's tinkling laughter breaks through her throbbing skull. "Oh, honey, just try to relax. I think this is probably worse than that time in India when you -"

"Shut up," Helena interrupts. "I thought we agreed to never bring that up _ever again_. I made you and Alan swear. an. _oath._"

Sawyer laughs in reply, and says, "Just get some rest."


	3. Sin City

Case 47

"We're going to Vegas," Sawyer says, dropping a thick stack of manila folders onto the massive oak dining table where Alan and Helena are eating breakfast. She stalks to the kitchen island and pours herself a mug of steaming coffee, eyeing her two agents warily.

"Excellent." Alan looks up from his hearty breakfast of a grapefruit and granola. (HG, as polite as she sometimes is, does not refrain from rolling her eyes every morning at this spectacle.) He looks like a child on Christmas morning, Helena thinks. "I'll finally get to practice my card-counting skills."

"We're gambling on the job?" Helena says with mock-astonishment. "And you wouldn't even let me drink that last time I had to press that...man for information in that pub! And he slurred! I probably would have understood him better had I been slightly inebriated myself..." She lets her voice trail off, shooting a coy glance at Sawyer, who retaliates by rolling her eyes.

"It's against the rules of the contract I signed to let you drink. Security precautions. Prophylactic measures, if you will." Sawyer grins at Helena; Alan groans into his breakfast.

"Yes, security precautions. Do they honestly think I have so little self-control that I'll try to end the world again if I get just _slightly_ tipsy?"

There's an awkward pause in the dining room that only ends when one of Sawyer's secretaries clears her throat, passing a note to Sawyer and hastily running out.

Sawyer scans it quickly enough; slipping it into her pocket, she nods at the two at the dining table. "Dorry will clean it up," she says. "Let me go brief you guys on what we're gonna do."

–-

"I'm supposed to go undercover?" Helena says incredulously. "With you as my partner?" Her eyebrows narrow in suspicion. "What exactly is that term...trophy wife! Am I the trophy wife, or are you? How old are you anyway? How old is Alan? Why do I always have to do the dangerous things?" Her voice is reaching a dangerously high pitch.

Sawyer grabs her wrist and says, "You're doing the big part because you're pretty and you know how to do a long con, and it's rude to ask a lady how old she is." She flashes her teeth at Helena, and continues. "And Alan is...Alan is old enough to think for himself."

Alan flicks a bit of brown hair out of eyes and smiles dangerously at Helena. "I'm too pretty to have a trophy wife," he declares.

"But that doesn't even make sense!"

"Let's get back to the mission!" Sawyer bellows. Glaring at the two, she sighs, and says, "There's a poker chip that's killed at least 12 people in the past couple of months in horrible ways the authorities are attributing to 'wrong place, wrong time.' The bad thing is that the thing looks like a normal poker chip."

Alan and Helena cough discreetly into their hands.

Ignoring them, Sawyer soldiers on. "The good thing is that we knows it's somewhere in the basement of the main Wynn Hotel in Vegas right now. It's a $10,000 chip, so we're going to pretend to be high-falutin' bastards. Helena, this is where your British accent kicks in."

Helena snorts. "If only I was born with a Cockney accent..."

"We'll pose as two ridiculously drunk women having a night on the town. Alan will be scouring around the tables, looking for the chip. It's black with a slight notch on the side, possibly some gold flecks. There's some legends about the origins, but it's not really known-"

"Sawyer, just shut up." Helena beams at Alan.

"Fine. Scott's coming along to work the comms; he'll be waiting for us in the van outside the hotel. Probably near the service entrance."

"Sounds like a plan."

–-

"Darling, I do think you should go check on Alan sometime soon. You can leave me alone for just a bit, you know. It's not like I'm going to find a weapon of mass destruction here."

Sawyer sips delicately from a champagne flute, her diamond necklace glittering under the lights. ("No, it's not an artifact. No, it's not going to kill me. I actually bought it with my own money, Alan.") Her strapless black cocktail dress is attracting looks from the men and women in the room.

"He should be fine." Sawyer replies smoothly. "Let's go find us a poker chip, _darling_." Sawyer links her arm with Helena's, and begins to tour around the private room. "Your red dress is getting quite a lot of stares," she whispers into Helena's ear. "I think it's the long slit."

"And who chose the dress? Not I!"

"Whatever. Anyway, keep your eyes – Oh _shit_." Sawyer hurriedly untangles her arm from Helena, muttering into her comm: "We have two interlopers. I repeat, we have two interlopers." Grabbing Helena's wrist, she edges out of the room and begins to run.

Alan hastily extricates himself from the table, leaving behind a mountainous pile of poker chips, using his long legs to catch up to them. They're hurriedly walking down a side corridor to avoid suspicion, Helena cursing her high heels every so often, when someone shouts Helena's name.

Helena thinks it sounds vaguely like Myka.

Sawyer swears loudly. Alan reaches for the Sig Sauer in the waistband of his pants.

The three of them slowly turn around to look an angry Myka in the eye. She's brandishing a Tesla. Claudia looks torn behind her.

"H.G. Wells," Myka grits out. "You are under arrest."


End file.
